Franck Gervais: “Reinventing a more local and responsible tourism.”

Frank Gervais was appointed CEO of the Pierre & Vacances – Center Parcs Group in 2021. He previously led the transformation of Thalys after serving as CEO of Voyages-SNCF. Franck Gervais also served as President of the Union des marques from 2019 to 2020. Additionally, he currently sits on the board of directors of the La Poste Group.

Your strategic plan “Reinvention” refers both to the transformation of your group and, more generally, to that of tourism undergoing significant changes. What role does CSR play in this new positioning?

Our “reinvention” plan is based on three pillars: CSR, customer experience, and economic performance. If one of the three pillars, inseparable from the others, does not function properly, our entire strategy suffers, so we give equal importance to each of these different aspects. Our group’s transformation is indeed total, 360 degrees, and this is what also gives meaning to our strategy.

If we detail the CSR pillar further, we are highly committed at two levels:

Regarding the environmental aspect, the group has a high ambition in terms of carbon footprint: -51% of our CO2 emissions between 2019 and 2030. We have already achieved -20% between 2019 and 2023. We are mindful of our energy consumption, the temperature of common areas, the water in our aquatic spaces, etc.

The remaining 30% will be achieved through investments, in terms of thermal aspects, renewing our energy mix, transitioning to decarbonized energies (biomass, geothermal, photovoltaic, etc.).

These are costly investments, but it is through this determination that we will be able to meet our objective by 2030.

Regarding the societal aspect, the group’s philosophy is to promote return to employment. The example of our seasonal workers, who are very numerous, nearly 2000 per year, are hired and for longer terms in fixed-term contracts or permanent contracts.

You aim to be “the European leader in reinvented, authentic, local tourism”. How do you concretely implement this objective?

Local tourism mainly refers to the distance traveled between your residence and your holiday destination: this is concretely our positioning, the one our group is fighting for, and in which we are the European leader.

As for the idea of reinvented tourism, more authentic, it translates into practicing local activities, responsible consumption patterns, etc. For example, we work hand in hand with local authorities to create infrastructure for decarbonized heat sources, buffer basins to limit our water consumption and recover, recycle water. Another illustration of this ambition to embody a more authentic tourism is our concern for “renaturing”. The goal is to transform former industrial or military brownfield sites into parks to give them a second life, thus avoiding over-artificialization of the land.

A recent example is in Belgium, where we opened a Center Parcs domain on a former mining basin closed for 40 years. We simply recreated life through our environmentally friendly installations on a disused and already artificialized area.

Your strategy around tourism with a positive impact seems to be successful from an economic performance perspective. How did you manage to combine these two objectives and what advice could you give to leaders who need to pivot their business model towards more sustainability while maintaining or even developing their growth?

One simple but crucial thing: we greatly improved the quality of our tourist offer. This was made possible through a €700 million investment plan over five years, increasing our CAPEX from €80 million per year to €120 million per year.

And the corollary of this approach is that if we improve the customer experience, our more satisfied customers will spend more and come back more often. Our prices have mechanically increased by 25% between 2019 and 2023, but this is explained by the improvement of our product, which is no longer the same at all.

We offer unique experiences in parks, residences in the heart of nature. We want to offer quality accommodations in quality locations, whether on the coast, in the mountains, or even inland, and provide experiences, a perfect alternative between an Airbnb and a hotel.

If I were to give advice, I would say that it is necessary to combine ambition and execution, and this involves considering all stakeholders: shareholders, customers, employees. If the leader’s vision does not involve all these stakeholders in the strategy, then something is missing.

Moreover, involving stakeholders also means accepting customization, with a good diagnosis for each entity, so that each one develops its own plan, in line with the Group’s overall strategy.